A new book, “Rising Star,” shedding light on Barack Obama’s past, suggests he was more politically ambitious at a younger age than previously believed — and that he had asked another woman to marry him before he ever met his eventual partner, Michelle.

The other woman, Sheila Miyoshii Jager, shot Obama down because her mother thought she was too young. Jager, at the time of the 1986 reported proposal, was 23 years old; Obama, 25.

They continued to date for a while longer, though. And she’s since dished on their relationship. “I remember very specifically that by 1987, about a year into our relationship, he already had his sights on becoming president,” she said, author David Garrow writes.

And maybe Jager’s Dutch-Japanese heritage was a political liability to Obama?

In a review of the book, The Washington Post wrote: “Garrow portrays Obama as a man who ruthlessly compartmentalized his existence; who believed early on that he was fated for greatness; and who made emotional sacrifices in the pursuit of a goal that must have seemed unlikely to everyone but him.”

Obama, early on, looked at Chicago as a possible venue for his political aspirations. He also thought of the U.S. Senate — and we all know how that turned out, right?

“The review pointed out another book that said at the time [of his formative political aspirations] that it could be seen as a political liability for a black politician in the area to have a wife that was not African-American,” Fox News reported.

“Barack and Sheila had continued to see each other irregularly throughout the 1990-91 academic year, notwithstanding the deepening of Barack’s relationship with Michelle Robinson,” Garrow wrote. “‘I always felt bad about it,’ Jager reportedly said.”

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